Step away from the soccer pitch: grooves and moves from tots to teens

Donnacha Lynch tried soccer and other sports as a child but didn’t really enjoy being part of a team.

“The constant training and Saturday morning football matches: I just didn’t like the pressure of performing.” What’s more, one particular coach “was very, very serious about it, and it just didn’t click with me”.

By the age of 11 he had given it up. But at home in Co Louth, his mother read about hip-hop classes being offered in Drogheda and decided it might be a good activity for Donnacha and his older brother because they loved the film Step Up.

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Children from 3 years old enjoying dance classes run by Jacinta Cassidy and her company Fit Kids Fit Teens in Mell Parish Hall, Drogheda, Co Louth. Photograph: Barry Cronin

“We both tried it out. It was very new to us but we decided to go back the next week to give it a fair shot. We just kept going back.”

Little did he know it was sowing the seeds for a promising career, as well as being a high-energy past-time.

Lynch, who is 18, has just finished a year in dance performance at Sallynoggin College of Further Education in Co Dublin and has been invited to audition in June for a four-year dance course at a university in the Dutch city of Tilburg. He practises every day, goes to the gym and eats very healthily. But “not every dancer has to be a well-toned athlete”, he is keen to stress. “Anyone can be a dancer.”

He sometimes wonders what would have happened to him if he hadn’t discovered dance when he was giving up sport.

“I think I would have just been sitting around playing video games all night.”

Getting kids off the couch was the aim of Jacinta Cassidy when she started teaching dance in the living room of her Mulhuddart home in west Dublin more than 28 years ago. Dance had always been a passion and she recalls forming her own troupe at the age of 12 to entertain patients in Cappagh hospital: “They used to give us chocolates and grapes,” she says.

Working in the airline business, she had lived in the US and saw the child obesity crisis heading our way. It motivated her to set up Fit Kids, Fit Teens Ireland, offering classes in popular dance forms.

When hip-hop took over, more boys started coming in and now many of the classes, for age three upwards, are evenly balanced genderwise. Currently operating in about 25 locations from north Dublin up to Monaghan, the instructors have grown up with the company.

Although it is very fun-orientated, there are plenty of events for “crews” and solo dancers who want to compete and Cassidy believes it can be a great alternative to sport for a child.

“There’s the energy but also creativity involved and also the team; it covers all of that. Dancers are very, very physical; they’re like little tanks.” An hour-long class, for which you pay as you go, costs €7.

Dance and fitness instructor Jane Shortall also testifies to how children who shy away from sport can excel at contemporary dance. When she runs masterclasses in schools, PE teachers will often remark that they are seeing certain pupils in a new light.

“It can really bring a kid out of themselves when you give them something as different as dance,” says Shortall. It can help non-sporty children find their way with a physical activity they are passionate about and that they will more than likely continue into adulthood.

Shortall is leading a two-hour Hip Hop Dance party for children aged eight to 14 this Sunday, May 24th, from 2.30-4.30pm at the Swan Leisure Centre in Rathmines Square,  Dublin 6. It will be suitable for boys and girls, from beginners up, and they will learn “ole skool funky grooves and moves as well as an MTV-style choreographed routine” she adds. The cost is ¤10 at the door, with no prebooking required. All proceeds go to Aware.

fitkidsfitteensireland.com or tel: 086 2685280; janeshortall.com or tel: 085 147 6282.